Child Labor Disgrace

The child slave labor scandal in China's Shanxi Province uncovered a depressing cost of China's rapid development. While for some development has brought riches, for others it has brought misery and some of the unlucky ones are children.

However, something good has come out of Shanxi. It has brought public and government attention to the issue and prompted action that could help to eradicate child labor from China in the long run.

Following self-criticism by Shanxi Governor Yu Youjun in regard to the child slavery scandal, China's State Council has decided to launch a nationwide campaign in July and August to crack down on illegal labor use.

The brick kiln incident proved a blow to China, which has been striving to build a stronger legal system and protect workers' rights.

According to news spokesman Li Yingming, in Hongtong County where the scandal broke out, telephone calls flooded in every day, some from parents looking for their children and others accusing local officials of being inhumane. "For a time the chief leaders of the county didn't dare to pick up the phone," Li said.

Young misery

By June 22 the scandal involved altogether 12 child laborers, according to statistics from the Shanxi authorities. But according to the media, these might be just the tip of an iceberg, for more under-aged laborers could have been transferred somewhere else before the scandal was exposed.

"We've carefully verified the 12 child laborers," said Zhang Mingqi, a senior official of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, who led an investigation team dispatched to inspect the brick kiln case.

"We are still looking into the issue of using child labor, and we've found other young laborers, some of whom are minors," said Zhang. The minimum working age in China is 16. There are also restrictions on employing minors aged between 16 and 18, but they are not considered child laborers.

"I've visited some 1,000 kilns in Shanxi and the situation there was too miserable to watch," said Fu Zhenzhong, a reporter with Henan TV, a television station based in neighboring Henan Province, and the key person in disclosing the kiln scandal.

"I remember an 8-year-old child looked me in the eyes, vacantly and innocent. He repeated his work of moving the heavy brick molds from one place to another," Fu recalled, saying that he found the youngest worker there was just 8 and the oldest 13.

There's not a specific figure for how many child laborers there are in China, but Tong Lihua, a public-interest lawyer, has some fractional numbers which can show how big the problem is.

East China's Zhejiang Province dealt with 2,263 child labor-related cases and freed 2,318 child employees between 2001 and 2005. In July and August of 2006, the Jiangxi Provincial Government saw 81 cases involving 129 child laborers. Central China's Henan Province in August 2006 alone found 381 illegally employed children.

"These figures at least show that it's not a single case of illegally using child laborers in China," said Tong, the founder of China's first center for juvenile legal aid. She set up a program to raise funds to help the children involved in the kiln slave incident recover from their physical and mental suffering.

What breeds child labor?

Child labor employment is illegal, but child workers are forced, tricked or on occasion voluntarily ask to work because they have dropped out of school, said Zhang.

"I found that in the Shanxi kiln case the majority of child laborers came to work either because they were too poor to go to school or because they were tired of schooling. The ones that were forced or tricked to work made a small part of the number," he said.

The high pressure of studying and fierce job competition have resulted in many voluntary school dropouts due to their depressed prospects for the future. The notion held by many parents that early work experience is better than higher education can lead to poor job prospects and helps to fuel the child labor market.

Among the dropout cases, most are from the rural areas and poor families, as was pointed out by a government report in Zhejiang, which said that family poverty is the main reason for child labor. The report also revealed that 98 percent of the province's child laborers are from outer provinces and 98 percent of them are born to multi-child families.

Duan Huidong, a poor rural child whose father died in 2000, leaving the family a 70,000-yuan debt, dropped out of school when he was in the first grade of middle school. He found a job in a glass factory 5 km away from his home and made a daily salary of 25 yuan-not enough for a meal at MacDonald's-to support his older brother who needed 4,000 yuan for the yearly educational expenditure in a vocational secondary school. It was just seven days in the factory before he was hurt badly and died in the workshop, at the age of 15.

Pupils who dropped out of school could end up as child laborers. (Image: Beijing Review)

Afraid of violating the law, state-owned enterprises and large companies stay away from employing child laborers, so most flock to smaller private, often unlicensed, enterprises. According to the labor report from Zhejiang, 98 percent of the child laborers there were concentrated in township private economy entities, especially family workshops.

The employers of child workers take a risk hiring them to reduce production costs and maximize their profits. Thus it's common to see poor treatment, underpayment, delayed or docked wages, prolonged working hours and poor working environments.

According to Tong, child workers usually work for 10-16 hours every day and have been made to work for a consecutive 30 hours in case to meet emergency orders. As a result, work injuries are common among them.

Li Qiaozhen from Shandong Province was 14 when she came to Beijing in 2002. She was doing as much as four employees' work in a bean food processing factory on a March day in 2005 when she was so tired that she got her right arm stuck in the machine which ripped it off.

In summer and winter holidays, it is common for poor children to do part-time work to make a little money for their tuitions. On June 24, 2006, 17 students went to work in a food factory in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, in the hope of lightening the financial burden for their families. The youngest of them was 12 and the oldest 17.

They woke up at 5 a.m. to just a steamed bun for breakfast. They had 10 minutes for lunch and had to work until 9 p.m., eating poorly cooked noodles for supper. They had been laboring for 20 days before they were found and sent home.

Social reasons

Bans on employing child labor are included in two laws, the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Minors and the Labor Law. The Criminal Law was amended to add the crime of using child labor to do heavy and dangerous work. In Tong's opinion, China has sound legislation forbidding child labor, so why has the law been unable to prevent cases like the Shanxi brick kiln scandal?

In summarizing the settlement of the kiln scandal, Shanxi Governor Yu said lack of supervision of China's floating labor force and use of labor were partly to blame.

Another lesson for the government was that some of the officials failed to carry out their duties and showed indifference toward health and safety. In the beginning the law enforcement departments in Shanxi dodged their responsibilities by telling the many parents searching for their children from Henan that they should speak to their local police departments.

In fact, the local procurator in Hongtong County had already planned to inspect the kiln and six local officials were eventually detained on charges of neglecting their duties.

The government in the meantime will show no mercy to the people who have covered up for the kiln criminals, vowed Wang Guozheng, the local Party head.

Despite the harsh words, what usually happens is that the labor security watchdog turns a blind eye to the child labor problem, except for special raids or campaigns once in a while to crack down on employers. They rarely use severe measures to root out the problem. Such nonfeasance to some degree has lent an opportunity to the illegal child labor employers.

Widespread examinations and inspections are the usual means to fight against child labor, combined with comprehensive public participation, which has been lacking in China.

According to lawyer and labor relations researcher Ma Jianjun, the issue of child labor has its roots in the unbalanced development between rural and urban areas and among different regions. In the long run if the government fails to narrow the gap child laborers will continue to be a problem.